Should Ukraine's offensive into Russia last week have really been a surprise? There are always multiple ways of looking at an event and one can usually look back and see that the signs were there. But we let ourselves get coaxed into the consensus viewpoint. In the case of the war, the consensus in the media depicted Russia grinding away at the six–hundred–mile–long frontline inside Ukraine. It depicted western support drying up, or coming too slowly, or wavering too obviously with the prospect of another Trump presidency looming on the horizon like a big orange harvest moon. Then Ukraine invaded Russia and many commentators were quick to say that Ukraine had needed to do this to change the narrative.
I reflect back to 24 February 2022. Nine hundred odd days ago. I admit that I was in the camp that thought it would be over quickly. I drastically underestimated Ukrainian morale and hopelessly overestimated Russian military competence. And yet, from a different perspective, Russia's invasion was always destined to backfire. This was a country, we were told ad nauseum, with an economy the size of Italy's and a fraction the size of the US or Chinese economy. According to the World Bank, Russia's nominal GDP is a smidgen over $2 trillion (2023 figure), compared to $27.4 trillion for the US. Once it was apparent that the US would support Ukraine militarily and that China (GDP $17.8 trillion) was chary about backing Russia too overtly the picture should have changed. Now one wonders quite how it is that Russia hasn't been emphatically defeated after nearly a thousand days of war.
Criteria for assessing the situation
Ten days after Ukrainian troops crossed the border into Russia, they have taken over 1,000 square kilometres of territory. They are at least 30km inside Russia in an operation that was planned with great care and secrecy. There is no reason to believe claims being made in Russia this morning that NATO was involved in the planning, even if I can believe that the US shared relevant military intelligence with Ukraine.
I cannot dismiss my assumption that Russia has sheer numbers of people and hardware to repel the attack, because overlooking that would be bad analysis, but there are other things to consider in assessing what could happen over the coming days and weeks. Relying too much on counts of weapons and personnel leads to the kind of mistaken predictions made in February 2022.
Way back in 1903 French General Ferdinand Foch outlined three principles important for success in land warfare: freedom of action, disciplined effort and economy of forces. The element of surprise is the embodiment of the first principle and Ukraine demonstrated that loudly and clearly last week. In respect of the second principle, Ukraine's military has clearly concentrated its efforts on executing a well–planned operation: as is being repeated with glee by many, Ukraine has captured more territory in Russia in the space of a few days than Russia has captured in Ukraine in many months.
What is less clear from afar is how economical it is behaving with its military resources. It seems that Ukraine has ten thousand or so troops inside Russia and it looks set on staying put for the time being. Reports suggest that some of Ukraine's most able forces are involved in the Kursk offensive, including units from its 22nd and 88th Mechanised Brigades (i.e. units with armoured personnel carriers or similar) and 82nd and 95th Air Assault Brigades. These are troops unavailable right now for defending the long part of the frontline inside Ukraine.
Reflecting on Ukraine's possible goals
Whether or not an uneconomical use of forces is problematic ultimately depends on the goals of the offensive. Let me therefore return to a question I addressed in an earlier post: why has Ukraine made this bold move? In the previous post I posited that the main goals of Ukraine's operation were:
(i) An appeal to its external backers (e.g. NATO members) not to draw down their support by showing that Ukraine still retained the initiative.
I noted that this was risky because NATO members' position has generally been that weapons and hardware they supply to Ukraine cannot be used against targets on Russian territory (although the restriction had been slackened slightly in recent weeks). The Ukrainian troops crossing into Kursk region last Tuesday appear to have been supported by American and British–supplied tanks; the British and Americans appear to be okay with this. In this regard, Ukraine's gamble has reaped a reward.
(ii) An appeal to Russian citizens that they should withdraw their support for the invasion of Ukraine
Since I last wrote, I've discussed this viewpoint with a couple of people who doubt that Ukraine's incursion will much affect Russian public opinion. The argument being that the Kremlin has such a tight control over the Russian information space that they can always present the situation favourably for Putin and co. I'm not so sure. There has not been a news blackout in Russia and, although the area occupied by Ukrainian forces is likely to remain very small, it has prompted the evacuation of a significant number of people and scores of Russian soldiers have surrendered. I suspect that the 'bad news' is spreading and will dent support in Russia for the war.
Two points I didn't consider in that post were that it could be: (iii) a morale boost for Ukrainians, or (iv) aimed at strengthening Ukraine's position for negotiations. This last point has cropped up repeatedly in the media reporting on the situation. I'm doubtful about this since I'm not sure that there's any appetite among Ukraine's political leadership to negotiate a peace settlement right now. At the same time, a stronger negotiating hand could be a useful by–product of the operation.
Troop movements
I largely dismissed the argument that Ukraine was seeking to divert Russian resources away from locations in Ukraine. The limitation of that argument is that Ukraine too has to move resources away from the long frontline inside Ukraine and, as already mentioned, Ukraine has deployed some of its best units in the Kursk operation. It certainly looks like an uneconomical use of forces and inconsistent with the goal of weakening Russia's military position in Ukraine itself.
True, it has been reported in the Ukrainian media that Russia has moved some units from the south of Ukraine to defend Kursk. I imagine, however, that Russia can easily redeploy other units to replace those and generally the troops it has moved to the border regions have come from elsewhere on Russian territory. Russia has also said that it will use conscripts from its spring draft to support the defensive operation. It has barely weakened its capabilities or strength in Ukraine.
That, really, is the rub. It is vital for people to keep an eye on what is happening inside Ukraine, because the Kursk gamble looks less compelling if Russian forces make corresponding territorial gains inside Ukraine. Reports suggest that Russia has been advancing near Pokrovsk, located to the north west of Donetsk, and the Kursk offensive will quickly lose its lustre if if leads to a collapse of Ukraine's defensive positions elsewhere. Such gains could also impede Ukraine's supply logistics.
So my analysis whittles down to Foch's third principle about the economy in the use of its forces: as well as concentrating its forces in battle (the second principle), a military needs to be sparing in its use of resources to make sure they are used to yield the greatest possible benefit. Is there a risk that Ukraine has overcommitted to the Kursk offensive? It needs a military analyst – or the passage of time – to answer that question properly. It has been reported, though, that Ukraine has taken troops away from Pokrovsk, which is precisely where Russia is concentrating some of its efforts.
What happens next?
Russia's chief of general staff, Valery Gerasimov, was reportedly warned three weeks ago that Ukraine was planning an attack across the border into Russia but dismissed it as 'noise'. No doubt he receives many such reports. No doubt the vast majority are indeed noise. But a military leader cannot afford to ignore warnings because of their low likelihood alone, not when they are potentially very high in impact.
I obviously don't know what happens next in military terms and it very much depends on Ukraine's primary goal for the offensive. The longer the Kursk incursion survives, the more significant it feels. The limits that NATO members had imposed on Ukraine's use of equipment look to have been rendered null and void, and Russia has (so far) not escalated in the ways it threatened which makes such restraints on Ukraine look unnecessary anyway. Ukraine's military has the initiative and it knows how to surprise everyone.
The party that shouldn't have been surprised, if it was a competent institution, was Russia's military. Its intelligence, which showed its weaknesses in its initial assessments about how the 2022 invasion would pan out, has been exposed as wanting once again. Whatever happens on the battlefield, the Kursk offensive has done considerable damage to Russia.
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